Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Bear

Today I performed a psychiatric history on a patient who was recently arrested for domestic violence. He is a big, bear-looking rancher from Yuma, who suffers from PTSD. This big bear of a man was in tears by the end of our interview as he thought of how his wife struck a deal with the county judge to let him out of prison over the weekend if he agreed to seek treatment at the VA. He loves his family. He is genuine, I could tell. After the interview I warned him he was going to be the patient my classmates would "round" on this afternoon. This basically means we sit in as the psychiatrist interviews him. I told him he should play a joke on my classmates and pretend to act weird during the interview. So, rounds comes, and we are sitting in a circle surrounding our patient and the psychiatrist. A half-hour into the interview, with a few of us already dozing off, the bear of a man is calmly explaining his PTSD and then suddenly yells in a loud voice "because I'm violent!!." If you thought jumping out of your chair one foot into the air was a lot for us students, you should have seen how high the psychiatrist jumped. The bear quickly laughed and gave me a wink and assured us he has a sense of humor like the rest of us. I'm lovin' psych!! We'll see what Anna has to say about my affinity for the mentally affected.